Globalisation and Discontent

I've been wanting to do a blog called "Globalisation and Discontent" for some time, and some overnight doubts about whether I'd been totally fair to the Deputy Prime Minister in my previous post have helped crystalise my thoughts on this theme.

It seems to me that a fundamental problem of the "New Labour Project" is an overenthusiastic and undiscriminating embrace of the "New" (or what it perceives to be "new"). Ill-advised government IT projects are a good example of this; and so is the Government's response to globalisation.

A "positive" attitude to globalisation is at the heart of Tony Blair's premiership; and this is one area where he and the Chancellor seem to be in step (although I may well be wrong here, but I'll pass that by). This is because, or so it seems to me, "New Labour" isn't really a "labour" party at all, but rather modelled more on the "Democrats" of Ex US President Bill Clinton.

I'm not such a great fan of Bill Clinton, and so could not help enjoying the irony when his appearance at the Labour Party Conference took second place in the media (tabloid and "quality") to the triangular personal affairs of two British immigration judges and their Brazilian cleaning lady, an illegal immigrant. So much for The Clinton Global Initiative !

I seem to remember that a senior figure in the Clinton administration - who too may have been some kind of judge - was also "undone" by her employment of a domestic worker who was an illegal immigrant. This case led to something of a furore in the US media, as I recall, on the grounds that rich americans were beneficiaries of the labour of poorly paid migrant workers.

Many people have argued passionately that one of the main dynamics of the most recent wave of globalisation (which isn't so new in itself) is the exploitation of poorer people and nations by richer people and nations. Not only are migrant workers - illegal or legal - open to exploitation, but their willingness to accept lower wages than local people may undermine the labour market.

For many of its citizens Britain is now a low wage country. Moreover the "wage" disparity between those on high incomes and those on low is growing. Immigration is widely credited with keeping wages down, which is precisely why employers organisations like the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) are enthusiastic about it, and why people in poorer areas often less so.

There are also other pressures linked to mass immigration, including those associated with housing provision and public services. These issues take me back to Mr Prescott, the former Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), and present Department for Communities and Local Government.

Government policy on planning and regional development underwent a major transformation between 1997 and the early part of the new millennium. Planning has increasingly been held up as an impediment to economic growth; and regional regeneration to tackle the North-South Divide" has taken second place to planning for development in the South of England.

In all this the Deputy Prime Minister and his various offices have undoubtedly been victims of forces greater than themselves : the Prime Minister and No 10 Policy Unit, and the Chancellor and his Treasury, with their globalisation-related agenda (not to to say ideology). Attached to this "agenda" one can also find various (?) "interns" of the former Bill Clinton administration.

One of these is Ed Balls, a former advisor to the Chancellor and how a junior minster (?) at the Treasury. Mr Balls is widely credited with being one of the authors of New Labour's economic policy and has gone by the title of "The Chancellor's Representative on Earth." The other is Yvette Cooper (Mr Ball's wife), and Minister for Housing and Planning.

The couple hold neighbouring parliamentary constituencies in the North of England, although, as I understand one of these (?Mr Ball's ) will disappear when boundary changes are introduced in a few year's time.

Ms Cooper is responsible for some of the daft planning and regeneration policies inherited by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). These are now subject to a departmental "Housing and Regeneration Review" (which began under the ODPM), and a separate economic review of local and regional policy which is being conducted by the Treasury.

The challenge for these reviews, I would propose, is the adoption of policies which suport the positive aspects of globalisation (of which I acknowledge there are some) and the growth of labour markets linked, for instance, to expansion of the European Union, and which are in their turn compatible with sustainable economic regeneration and environental conservation.

We are some way from this situation at the present time, and if I have attributed undue responsibility for this state of affairs to the Deputy Prime Minister, I offer him my most sincere apologies.